A senior CRPF official has raised questions on the encounter which was carried out in a joint operation by the Army, Assam Police, Army and the Saurashtra Seems Bal (SSB) in Assam’s Chirang district on March 30 this year.
Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rajnish Rai, currently posted in Shillong with CRPF as IG, North East Sector, has sent a report to the CRPF headquarters in Delhi alleging that the encounter, in which two two suspected members of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) or NDFB(S) faction were killed, was staged, The Indian Express reported.
The report says that the two men were picked up from a house in D-Kalling village and killed in cold blood in Simlaguri.
According to the report, Rajnish has claimed that weapons were planted on their bodies, and has called for a full-fledged investigation.
The report by the top cop says that it “present(s) a fictitious account of the joint operation by the security forces to conceal pre-planned murders of two persons in custody and present it as some brave act of professional achievement”.
Rai has also claimed that he has witnesses who have identified the bodies as those of the two men who were picked up and that these witnesses are in his safe custody.
Rai’s report, dated April 17, 2017, is marked to Assam Chief Secretary V K Pipersenia; the then acting CRPF DG Sudeep Lakhtakia; Lt Gen A S Bedi, GOC, 4 Corps & Chairperson, Operational Group, Unified Command; Assam DG Mukesh Sahay; SSB DG Archana Ramasundaram and CRPF ADG (NE Zone) Mohd Javed Akhtar.
The report suggests that a team (of Assam police and Army) picked up the NDFB(S) cadres from D-Kalling village and then met another team at Ouguri. It was then that the decision to kill the duo was taken.
